Divergence & Complexity

Your journey to your ultimate potential and the level at which you will do your best work is still going.

Most people, by contrast, have plateaued and reached their full potential by the age of 40. They will therefore appear more settled and content. They will lack the ambition that you have.

Your development curve is a very rare one, which explains much of what you have experienced in your life to date.

I ask you the question ‘What are you going to do with all this rare capability?’ and I think this is the question you need to really wrestle with. I say this because you can see that the level at which you will ultimately do your best work transcends business and is more about vision and purpose.

You are currently completing a transition. You will undergo another in approx. 13 years. Usually transitions can be unsettling as what has made sense to you for the last 10 years whilst seeing the world from the current perspective seems to make less sense as you start to see things with a new filter.

Whilst your current work is lucrative and useful this won’t be enough as your capability races away over the next 20 years. You can’t put a lid on capability as it has to be channelled somewhere. If you want to monetise it then now is a good time to start thinking. Non-executive and Chair roles could be considerations for you, as could coaching of CEOs (if their egos would allow it).

You are a change-maker. Most change-makers get to where you are right now, but less than 1% gets into the next stratum and less than 1% again gets to the stratum beyond that – which is where you will be in a few short years – so your capability is now becoming a real differentiator and this is what the world should be paying handsomely for.

It’s worth noting that many corporates are led by individuals who will only do their best work in the level lower than where you are right now. These individuals should really only lead functions – not businesses. They are not capable of integrating the various functional strands so they tend to lead their businesses with their functional hat on. This phenomenon explains why so many corporates fail to fulfil their potential. Higher capability executives tend to be overlooked as they tend not to play the normal corporate games seeing them as stupid and often they don’t present with the magical ‘charisma’ that leaders are supposed to have as they see the world so differently. They are either seen as threats or not natural leaders and are usually exited. Think about your feeling that you have spent your whole life ‘dumbing yourself down’ to fit in.

I don’t meet many individuals who make it into Stratum 7 of cognitive complexity and you are the first woman I have found in 15 years. What strikes me as different is that your immense cognitive capability is balanced with a good dose of emotional intelligence rather than the usual ego. This is your uniqueness.

As far as your current work is concerned, the challenge is that your vision will outstrip 99.9% of what your clients can see. You need them to trust you but they need more details and this wastes time and causes frustrations. It’s your responsibility to create a bridge between your capability and your clients.

The world in which you live – that world where everything is so simple – bringing all that frustration and wondering as to why it is not so simple for others is the key point.

Capability grows at different rates in different people. As a result it is quite simply the case that what you see is not what others see – that is why you need to persevere to get your point of view heard and not allow your ideas to be dismissed just because others who don’t make the same connections can’t see it. Think of Isaac Newton and the apple. The fruit picker just saw a falling fruit but through Newton’s eyes he saw something very different. It was a similar case with Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin – where the lab technician just saw a dirty slide.

You are described as ‘a handful’ in a positive and amusing way. This is the key. You will think bigger than anyone and you need people that embrace this rather than seeking to suppress and control your higher order thinking.

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Does it sound like I'm talking about you?***

Are you looking for a sounding board and advisor?

There are few who are capable of coaching and mentoring you.

I'm one of them.

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***This is an edited extract of my personal cognitive complexity report, undertaken by a British physicist.